Hitler nodded, then took his pistol out and rested it on his lap. He looked down at the weapon but did not move for it. “No almonds for me,” he said. He looked up from the pistol and smiled gently at Eva. “Let us sit here for just a moment longer. History can wait.”

  ***

  “Eva? Wake up. Eva? Can you hear me?”

  Eva Braun’s eyes fluttered open. A naked man knelt on the floor in front of her and shook her by the shoulders. She groaned as she tried to lift her head. “Sean? Is it done?”

  “It is,” he said. “I came through the wall just as he pulled the trigger.”

  Eva turned to see the slumped over body of Adolph Hitler. Blood leaked from the bullet hole in his right temple. Price examined the Fuhrer’s body, taking a deep breath before he said, “You did it. You actually did it.”

  “I did it,” she whispered. Her face twisted in disgust. She pursed her lips and spat at Hitler. “Burn in hell, you monster.”

  “We have to go,” Price said. “They heard the gunshot and won’t wait much longer. Can you stand?”

  “First, get the file. It has the artifact’s location.” Eva pointed at the row of books on the shelf behind him. “Third one in, hidden between the pages.”

  Price stood up and removed the third book in from the middle shelf. He flipped through the pages quickly until he found a small, crudely-drawn map of Antarctica with hand-written coordinates along the margins. Price memorized the latitude and longitude as he studied the map. “Do you really believe they found it?”

  “He certainly seemed to think so,” Eva said. She went to stand up but her legs wobbled and gave out under her. “I need to rest a moment.”

  Price searched for a box of matches. He grabbed several and lit them all at once, setting fire to the map and letting it burn in his hands until the page turned to black ash.

  Eva leaned back on the sofa cushion and closed her eyes. She sniffed the air and her eyes flew open. “Sean? Do you smell roasted almonds?”

  “No. It’s just the burnt paper.”

  She ran her tongue along the front of her teeth and said, “No! Oh my God. Is that what you meant, all those years ago at Berchtesgaden? Why did you let me take them?” Eva’s head snapped back and her arms and legs shot out violently and began to flail.

  Price grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to hold her steady. Her eyes rolled up into her head until they showed nothing but white. He called her name several times. “Hang on! I’ll get you out of here.”

  Eva Braun stopped convulsing. Her head flopped to the side and white foam spilled out from her mouth. Her final breath filled the room with the scent of burning almonds.

  The handle to the study’s door started to turn and slowly open. Price stepped back from the bodies, staring at the bodies of Adolph Hitler and his wife. He closed Eva’s eyes, then disappeared.

  ***

  President Harry Truman picked up the phone on his desk and said, “Yes?” The President’s face stiffened. “At the front door?” Truman cupped his hand over the phone and looked at the men sitting around him in the Oval Office. His eyes twitched nervously, “Omega is here. He walked right up to the front door and knocked like a visitor. What does that mean, Bill?”

  “Wild Bill” Donovan scratched his chin as he regarded Truman. He still hadn’t figured the President out. The man had a slow, southern way of speaking that belied his Missouri roots. He dressed like a school principal and sounded like a hillbilly, but still, it might be an act. “It means you should probably let him in, Mr. President. He’s showing you respect rather than just appearing in the middle of the room.”

  There was a snicker from the short, slight man opposite of Donovan. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover shook his head in disbelief. “I would have him shot on sight if he dared try such a trick, Mr. President.”

  Donovan raised an eyebrow and said, “Not unless you want to have pieces of G-Men splattered all over this room, you won’t.”

  “That’s enough, gentlemen,” the President said.

  “Mr. President,” Donovan said. “Agent Price just completed one of the most difficult operations the OSS has ever conducted. He lost a very close associate in the process. With all due respect, let him through the damn door.”

  Truman uncovered the phone’s mouthpiece and said, “Well, I guess you can bring him on back.”

  Several minutes later, a parade of rubber-soled shoe squeaks filled the hallway outside of the Oval Office. The door opened and several intense looking FBI agents came into the room. Large revolvers bulged under their cheap-looking suit coats. Three of them came and stood behind the Director. Hoover turned in his seat to watch the door. No one else spoke. No one else moved.

  Sean Price walked into the room in a hand-made suit, tailored to fit his small, lithe frame. His boyish face, ruined by a jagged scar across his right cheek.

  The President pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, smiled, then stood up. “Agent Omega? I have wanted to meet you for a long time. Welcome home.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “What’s your name son? I feel foolish calling you that. We’re among friends.”

  “I apologize, Mr. President, but my real name is six levels above your current security clearance.”

  “Is that right?” Truman said, smiling.

  “Throw this mongrel out on his ear, Mr. President,” Hoover snarled. “He has no right to speak to you like that.”

  “He’s following orders,” Donovan said. “My orders.”

  “In that case, let’s all sit down,” President Truman said. “I would like to hear every detail from you regarding Hitler’s demise, if you don’t mind. I also believe you have something very important to share with us regarding a particular artifact taken by the Nazis.”

  Donovan slid to the side of the couch to make room for Price, but Price ignored him and sat down across from the President. “Before I get to that, sir, I would like to know how my operative was given a real dose of cyanide after I explicitly ordered her to be given an inert substitute.”

  Director Hoover barked, “Show some respect, boy! Your President just told you to do something.”

  The President held up his hand and waved for Hoover to sit back. “It’s all right, J. Edgar. This young man has been through a lot on his country’s behalf.”

  Donovan looked at Price, and managed to get him to look back. “Not here,” Donovan mouthed. He cocked his head slightly in the direction of the FBI Director.

  Price took a deep breath and settled into his chair. “So you’d like to hear how we got Hitler?”

  ***

  The President, FBI Director, and William Donovan all looked down at the place on the map where Price’s finger landed in disbelief. “Gazala?” Hoover said. “That’s preposterous. We were told for certain that the Nazis buried the artifact in Antarctica.”

  “Not impossible. Rommel could have put it there,” Truman said. He shook his head, “I always did like the Desert Fox. He didn’t abide all that Jew-killing nonsense. Moral, but firm and strong. What better Nazi than Rommel to entrust with a weapon that was said to possess the power to kill God Almighty?”

  “If it’s even real,” Donovan said.

  “The entire idea is blasphemous, if you ask me,” Hoover said.

  Price shrugged. “All I saw written on that page were those coordinates, and Eva said that Hitler certainly seemed to believe it was real.”

  “Really?” Hoover sneered. “Is that what the Fuhrerwhore said?”

  Price turned to him quickly, but managed to keep his voice steady when he said, “Right before she realized she’d been betrayed by the people she trusted, yes.”

  “I suppose when one lies down with dogs, one should not be surprised to wake up with fleas,” Hoover said. “In this case, I heard she did quite a bit of lying down.”

  “Is that what you heard? Was that before or after Clyde Tolsen finished sticking his—”

  Bill Donovan grabbed Price by the elbow and squeezed hard. “Mr. President, I hate to be rude, but I need to debrief my man at OSS headquarters. We have quite a bit of paperwork to fill out.”

  The President had never turned away from the map. He waved his hand at them and said, “Of course, of course.”

  Donovan led Price from the Oval Office without another word, taking him halfway down the hallway until he let go. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

  Price snatched Donovan by the collar and threw him against the wall so hard it shook the portraits overhead and nearly knocked over a marble bust of Alexander Hamilton. “Was it you? Did you have her killed?”

  “Get your hands off of me, you insubordinate son of a bitch.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Price said. “Do not lie to me. I will be able to tell. I will smell it on you.”

  Donovan stopped struggling and let his arms drop to his side. “Sean, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Who did?”

  “I have no idea. It could have been Hitler himself. He didn’t trust the cyanide they gave him in the first place. He killed his own dog testing it out, Sean. For all we know, he switched Eva’s pill himself.”

  Price let go of him and stepped back, taking a moment to straighten his hair and let Donovan fix his clothing. “Listen, we’re already in a tight spot. Hoover is making his play to take the FBI worldwide. Whatever privilege I enjoyed around here ended when Frank died. I don’t know this new fellow very well, and he certainly doesn’t seem to know me.”

  “After what we just pulled off? It’s the greatest intelligence scheme in history. They should be pinning medals to our chest right now.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. We’re part of a dirty little National secret, Sean, and nobody likes those. I’ve seen men killed for knowing less than we do.”

  ***

  Sean Price stopped and looked up at the roof of OSS Headquarters from the parking lot, looking for the snipers assigned to the rooftops so he could give them the All-Clear signal. No one popped their head up.

  He reached for the front door, but two burly US servicemen burst through it carrying a large wooden desk. “Make a hole!” one of them shouted. Price stepped aside to let them go down the steps. The servicemen dropped the desk on the sidewalk, when someone else shouted “Make way! Make way!” A large filing cabinet came through the door, carried by two more servicemen.

  The secretary’s desk was unoccupied. There were no guards stationed at the front entrance. Price walked to the elevator and keyed in his sequence, and while he waited for the lift doors to open, unfamiliar men strolled around the halls unchallenged, removing items from the building.

  On the second floor, he nearly collided with a man carrying a large box of files out of William Donovan’s office. Price stuck his head into the door and said, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Donovan tapped the mouth of a half-empty bottle of Irish whisky on his desk and slurred, “We’re being shut down, Sean. Let’s drink.”

  “Shut down? That’s insane. The US just blew up half of Japan. She needs OSS more than ever.”

  Donovan shook his head and slid an empty shot glass across the desk. “President Truman is signing an order in two months that renders us obsolete. Got the phone call today.” Donovan filled both of their glasses and said, “Cheers. Thanks for playing. I guess I should be happy it wasn’t a bullet in the head.”

  Price took the glass from him and downed it. He slumped into a chair and said, “So what happens now?”

  Donovan shrugged as he poured another drink. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Truman and Hoover can have it. I’m done.” His eyes closed briefly, but as quickly as his head started to fall toward the desk, it popped back up again. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you quit.”

  “I didn’t quit. I took a break.”

  “Did you go someplace nice?” Donovan leaned forward on his desk and whispered, “Somewhere with a lot of pretty girls, Sean? Big, buxom, women with coconuts over their ladyparts?”

  “No,” Price said. “Somewhere a little colder.”

  Their eyes met and Donovan suddenly broke out in a sloppy laugh. He pounded the desk and said, “I knew it! I knew it wasn’t in Africa. You sly dog.”

  Price stuck his hand across the desk, “Give me that bottle before you poison yourself.”

  Donovan leaned back in his chair as Price poured both of them another whiskey. There was a soft knock on the door. “Come on in!” Donovan shouted. “Come on. Take it. Take it all. Go stuff it up your ass for all I care.”

  A tiny man stood at the door, holding his hat in his hands. He spoke with a thick German accent when he said, “I beg your pardon. I was hoping to find Mr. William Donovan here, but the building seems to be unoccupied.”

  Donovan looked up and suddenly snorted in laughter. He snapped his fingers several times. “You look just like that guy! What’s his name? With the bushy hair. The science fellow.”

  “Ja, I get that a lot.”

  Price swallowed the last of the whiskey in his glass and set it down on the table. He turned around to look at the person speaking and leapt to his feet.

  Albert Einstein’s eyes glittered as he looked at Price, “You must be the one they call Omega.”

  ***

  They went outside the office to get away from the snoring.

  Price shut Donovan’s office door and told Professor Einstein to follow him down the hall. “We can talk in quiet downstairs in the conference room.”

  Einstein shook his head in amazement, “I have wanted to meet you for so very long. The stories I have heard. You cannot imagine.”

  “If you’re still willing to get on an elevator with me, I am guessing you didn’t hear the worst ones.”

  “No, no, my boy,” the Professor said, patting Price gently on the arm. “I know that you only did what needed to be done. It is the same for me. I create the Atomic Bomb so that we have it before the Nazis. But then the Nazis are defeated and we use it against Japan.”

  Price pressed the basement floor button and looked at the old man. Einstein’s eyes were baggy and red. “Your research won us the war though,” Price said.

  “A heavy, heavy price to pay for such a thing,” Einstein said. “All those innocent people. Roosevelt would not have done that. He’d have let the soldiers fight. That is how it should be, ja?”

  “Yeah,” Price said. The elevator doors opened and Price led the Professor down the hallway toward the conference room. There was a large projection screen in the center of the room, although the projector and film canisters had already been removed. “So what brings you here today, Professor?”

  “There were almost three hundred thousand Japanese killed by my Atomic Bombs. Six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Many, many millions more killed from all of the fighting in the wars.”

  “Yes. It was a terrible time,” Price said.

  “Time!” Einstein said. “That is exactly what I want to talk to you about today. You, the one they call Omega, who vanishes in and out of the air and passes through walls. It is you who is going to help me save the whole world!”

  “How?”

  “By killing Adolph Hitler.”

  Price paused. “But…we already did that, Professor.”

  “I would like for you to try it again!”

  ***

  Albert Einstein stood in the empty conference room, waiting. He had been squeezing his right hand shut for so long he could no longer feel his fingers. The air crackled with static electricity and Sean Price shimmered into existence, standing naked on the floor in front of him.

  Einstein held up his hand to stop Price from speaking. “Don’t tell me. I want to see it for myself.” Einstein slowly uncurled his fingers and looked into his empty palm.

  “I couldn’t do it,” Price said.

  Einstein sighed with defeat and picked up a nub of chalk. He immediately began scribbling equations across the surface, writing so fast that white dust blew across his entire hand. “You can move through space, ja?” Einstein said. He drew a wide circle around one set of equations. “This is space.” He walked down to the opposite end of the board and slapped it with the palm of his hand. “This is time! You move through space, you can move through time. Try again.”

  “I can’t do it, Professor. It’s impossible.”

  The old man hopped up and down with his fists clenched, “Whole thing is impossible! You already can do impossible, Omega. Go again.”

  “I want to try something first,” Price said. He walked over to his jacket and rummaged in the pockets, finding a photograph. Price handed the photograph to Einstein and said, “Hold that in front of you.”

  “Who is this woman? I have seen her face before.”

  “Just hold it there.” Price backed up several feet from the Professor and took a deep breath. He launched into a full sprint, running directly at the old man.

  Einstein held the picture in front of him like a shield, clenching his eyelids shut as Price charged. He braced himself for impact, but when he felt nothing, opened his eyes and blinked into nothingness.

  Price passed through Einstein and found himself inside a small tunnel with a tiny speck of daylight at the opposite end. The light was closing rapidly and Price ran as fast as he could, diving to reach it.

  He rolled across rocky terrain, stabbing himself on branches and bushes as he toppled to the ground. He got up and looked around. It was hot and sunny. Summertime. Price studied the mountain peaks and full, lush foliage. He heard the sound of rushing water and realized where he was.

  Price made his way down the mountain slope to where Eva Braun sunned herself on a rock overlooking a large pond. She was completely naked, with rich, tanned skin that off-set her short-cropped, sun-bleached hair. It occurred to Price he did not know what year it was, or whether they’d met yet. He could not tell if Eva would recognize him or run away screaming.

  He made his way toward the water carefully, not wanting to startle her, but she turned and looked directly at him. “Sean?”

  Price froze in place. “Eva?”

 

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